Recently, much progress has been made in dealing with mail sortation problems. U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/589,634, filed Jul. 21, 2004 is incorporated herein by reference, and is a precursor to the present invention. That previous version used a folder/divider system for escorting mail through a sortation system. However, that system had various drawbacks, such as difficulties with the unload step, and the possibility of jams while moving the mail pieces out of the folders/dividers. That previous invention disclosed a method for sorting a wide variety of mail piece sizes and weights in a single pass. The paper handling architecture described therein improved upon previous mail sorters in that during the sorting operation, the mail is contained within folder/dividers, and the mechanism to transport the mail operates on the folder/divider, not the mail itself. Nevertheless a folder/divider system is not an optimum method for efficiently sorting mail, and it would be advantageous to use a different technique that extends the capabilities or application Ser. No. 60/589,634 while reducing the amount of paper handling required.
Many posts around the world are seeking to develop a more effective mail merging system that automatically merges all mail streams and sorts them to delivery sequence. The system should accomplish this merging at the step of carrier sequence sorting by merging all elements of the mail stream (letters, flats, periodicals, post cards etc) at the final sorting process.
At present, some of the mail streams arrive at the postal branch offices pre-sorted, and some do not. Generally, even when the mail arrives at the branch already sorted by delivery sequence, postal carriers need to merge multiple streams of mail (often as many as 10) from different mail trays—and for this the postal carriers generally use a manual sorting process. When mail does not arrive at the branch pre-sorted, the carriers spend even more time—several hours—sorting the mail into carrier delivery sequence manually. Often, the carrier on mechanized routes will complete the mail merging while sitting at each post box—merging mail from multiple mail trays on the spot before placing it in the mailbox. This requires carriers to spend substantial time merging and sorting the mail before they can start to deliver it, or else they must complete the merging while they are delivering the mail, thus making the mail delivery process (the last mile) quite inefficient. The instant invention corrects that inefficiency in an automated manner that accommodates not only normal types of mail, but also mail pieces having exceptional physical characteristics.
In 1990, the United States Postal Service (USPS) issued a Request for Proposal for a carrier sequence bar code sorter, type B, a single pass sorter to arrange mail in carrier delivery sequence. To date, 14 years later, no product has been manufactured and delivered to satisfy that need.
Today, many posts sort a percentage of letters to delivery sequence at central sorting facilities. Letters and flats are currently sorted separately on different pieces of sorting equipment designed to sort only a limited range of mail piece types. The sorting is done centrally because the equipment required to automate this process is simply too large to fit in the branches. The cost would be prohibitive for the USPS to install such equipment in each branch. Furthermore, sorting centrally is also much more efficient, since the only sorters available today are multiple pass sorters which may include over a hundred bins and may require two or more sort sequences to get the mail in delivery sequence order. However, when the carrier delivery sequence sorting is done centrally and separately on each different category of mail (letters, flats, and others), and then sent to branch offices, the carriers must still spend the first two to three hours of their day merging and sorting flats, periodicals, brochures, and all the other mail that could not be sorted to delivery sequence automatically. For many posts, all the mail is still sorted by the carriers manually into delivery sequence.
The sorters available today have significant limitations: they are either huge, expensive pieces of equipment with a very large number of bins, and require significant space to operate; or they have a smaller number of bins, but require multiple passes to operate. This multi-pass operation is a very labor-intensive process. So, for example, a sorter with 16 bins, sorting a batch of mail to 600 addresses, will require three passes. That means the operator must load the mail, operate the sorter, then unload the mail from each bin and re-load it into the feeder three times. While this results in some time savings compared to manual sorting, the value proposition is limited because of the high labor content. See, for example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20020139726 entitled Single Feed One Pass Mixed Mail Sequencer, filed Apr. 2, 2001.
Unfortunately, even the best available mail sorting systems are prone to failure, especially when dealing with mail pieces having exceptional physical characteristics (e.g. due to exceptional bulk, size, or weight). Even with standard, conventional letters, the best available sorters can jam and shut down, thereby reducing efficiency.
Another application for the instant invention is for sorting incoming mail in enterprises. The manual method is still the most common method that enterprises use to sort their incoming mail. This is also very labor intensive, but the investment required and the size of available mail sortation equipment is generally prohibitive.
The postal services around the world have been investing heavily in automated mail sorting systems over the past several years. The systems currently planned or currently being used have several limitations with respect to the invention disclosed herein. Such systems are designed to sort letters only, or flats only, but not both in combination. This results in multiple mail streams that must be manually merged by the carriers, making the carrier inefficient. Another limitation is that such systems use conventional, high speed mail handling technology, in which the mail pieces undergo multiple high accelerations, stops, starts, twists, inversions, deflections, and other manipulations; which results in undesirable jams and damage to the mail. A further limitation is that the existing systems require multiple passes (multiple feedings and multiple unloadings of the sorter bins) in order to sort mail to the delivery sequence for a carrier route. This requires a substantial amount of manual labor to load mail into the feeders and unload the sorters multiple times, and increases the risk of jams and damage because of the multiple passes of each mail piece. This also requires careful sequencing during load, which is a process prone to human error.
The address reading and interpretation systems are far from perfect (and probably will be well into the future). So, the automated sorting is usually augmented by a video encoding scheme in which images of the unreadable addresses are captured, transmitted to a remote video encoding site at which a human interprets the addresses and keys in the interpretation, then sends this “correct information” back to the sorter where it is printed in encoded form on the mail. While this encoding operation is happening, the unreadable mail must be stored either in a buffer in the sorter transport, or in a bin for later manual re-loading into the sorter. This system is complex, expensive, and involves multiple extra steps—but is necessary because of the limitations of the address reading technology.
Because the sorting equipment tends to be very large and very expensive, the posts emphasize operating it at very high speeds, and with very high capacities. Thus, the automated sorting operations are only installed in large centralized sorting facilities. The sorted mail is then shipped to the local destination delivery unit (DDU), where it is loaded on the vehicles used by the carriers. Note that a “delivery destination unit” (DDU) is sometimes called a “delivery office,” and therefore a DDU also refers to a “delivery office” throughout this application. However, because the mail is sorted centrally, the carrier must still spend 2.5 to 3 hours each day manually sorting mail that arrived at the DDU and mail that could not be sorted automatically. While on the route, the carrier than merges the mail sorted automatically with the mail sorted manually, which makes the carriers even less efficient.
Because the existing sorting equipment is operated at very high speeds, a large percentage of the current mail streams cannot be handled reliably with the existing equipment. An average of about 20% of mail received at the posts is “non-machinable” with the existing high speed equipment. Often, hundreds of workers are employed to manually identify and cull out this mail for separate handling before the machinable mail is loaded into the high speed sorters. The non-machinable mail requires a significant amount of manual manipulation, storing, transportation, and sorting. It would be very desirable to reduce the amount of non-machinable mail.
One of the features of the USPS Intelligent Mail® products and services is the ability to track ordinary mail pieces from ingestion into the post to the final delivery. Frequently, the planet codes are employed to enable this process. Planet codes, however, can only be used to track the mail to the last point where the planet code was scanned, usually in a sorting operation. Other special handling items, such as registered mail, can be scanned by the postal carrier using a hand held scanner at the point of delivery. This operation takes considerable time on the part of the carrier, and is not really suitable to use for tracking all intelligent mail pieces.
In U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60/589,634, filed Jul. 21, 2004, owned by the present assignee, the disclosure addressed the USPS DPP initiative, which proposes to wrap all the mail for each address into a single bundle to facilitate delivery. That disclosure proposed the following solution: An ink jet printer could print a unique bar code on each wrapped packet—and the system software links this code with all of the bar codes, planet codes, Postnet barcodes, and any other scanned and stored information on the surface of the mail piece. When the carrier delivers the entire packet, the carrier scans only the external barcode at each address—and the software links this in the system memory with all the pieces in the packet. So, only one scan is required per delivery point, regardless of the number of coded mail pieces are bundled in the packet. An interesting alternative is possible with the use of RFID tags affixed to the wrapper material either instead of or in addition to the printing subsystem. So, during the wrapping process, the RFID tag could be provided with a unique identifier for each packet, which would be associated and linked with all the information (codes, etc) previously scanned on each or the enclosed mail pieces. This technology will make the carrier even more efficient at the point of each delivery. Instead of a separate action to scan a bar code on the wrapper, the carrier carries an RFID interrogator unit to read the information on each RFID tag as the bundle is being delivered, and provide feedback information to the central database that all the contents of the bundle were delivered at the noted time. Additionally, the RFID interrogator unit could be adapted to include an audio capability so that when the information is extracted from the wrapper by RFID interrogation, and if one or more pieces of mail in the packet requires action on the part of the carrier (example, get the receiver's signature), the carrier can be prompted or alerted audibly by the RFID unit to take the required action.
These concepts for tracking the mail enabled by the information generated during the sorting operations are dependent on the USPS intent to bundle the mail for each delivery point into a single packet. Recently, the USPS has conducted a marketing survey on this concept, and has discovered that the mailers and the mail receivers do not like it. So, there is a real possibility that the USPS will abandon the idea of putting the mail into packets; and therefore, as described in provisional patent application U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60/589,634, the opportunity to employ the methods previously disclosed to track the mail all the way to the delivery point may be lost.